So why is it so hard to do good advertising? Because doing the obvious requires doing a whole lot of thinking. And a whole heck of a lot of creativity.

And that's hard.

"I have decided that picking out the obvious thing presupposes analysis, and analysis presupposes thinking, and I guess Professor Zueblin is right when he says that thinking is the hardest work many people ever have to do, and they don’t like to do any more of it than they can help." — Obvious Adams

In advertising, campaigns usually start with a "brief." Typically, it's written by an account manager — or a "planner" — who attempts to provide key facts for the creative team to use when making the ad. It usually contains information like:

Audience (who is the ad for?)

Main message (what's the one thing we want to communicate?)

Key insight (an irrelevant fact cherry-picked from research)

Background information (why this ad, and why now?)

Mandatories (stuff the client is making us include even though it doesn't make sense)

A good brief tells the creative team what they need to know. A bad brief tells the creative team what to create.

And a bad creative team (and accounts team), make an ad that's essentially just an illustration of the brief.

Here's an example I saw the other day of an ad that's an illustration of the brief:

Yes, I took this photo in a bar restroom.

You can imagine what the "insight" was: Buying a car is a key moment in a person's life. Millennials aren't buying many cars, though, these days. So let's tell them to buy a car before they get married or have kids.

Do you see the problem(s)? It's not an ad for this car. It's an ad for cars in general, sort of. Unless you're the only car maker (or this car is far and away the top car in the category), this doesn't help you. If this ad does anything, it will only be to make someone think about buying a car. Not this car.

But, of course, it won't even do that.

But it's easy to pick on this ad, and I'm sure the creative team were hamstrung in some way or another. But what about a world where they're not? If that's the "insight" we're stuck with, and we have to write an ad based on it, what would be a better concept?

Well, let's give it a shot. Let's apply a few rules of marketing we know:

Unless you are the leader in your category by far, advertise your product, not the category

If you are a competitor brand, position yourself in opposition to your competitors or the prevailing thought

Make an impact (90% of advertising is ignored or not recalled)

Communicate a single, key point

Advertise to your most likely customers, not the longshots

We know that millennials are buying cars, but they are spending a lot less on them.

So our ad should:

Explain why this car is better than other affordable cars

Advertise longterm value, not price

Have a catchy headline, and look different than other car ads

Tell us something about this particular car

Go after millennials that are buying cars, but affordable, practical cars

Finally, understand that millennials don't have the same connection to cars that older generations do. A car doesn't mean "freedom" anymore. It's another thing you feel you have to do (like get married and have kids). Appeal to that.

The Civic Coupe is heavy on features, including their "Honda Sensing" technology. Some of the features, including its rear camera, are meant to help avoid hitting pedestrians.

So a better direction for the ad would be the below. This obviously wouldn't be final copy, but it's a direction and position worth exploring:

Pedestrian.

Not everything about our cars are exciting. But they are important. Our Honda Sensing technology is built to keep the people around your car as safe as the people in your car. The all new 2016 Civic Coupe. Built for people.

Isn't that better? Now, this has the potential to turn off people who do hate pedestrians — you don't want to end up like "Your Father's Oldsmobile." So that's a risk that would need to be considered. But it might be better to start positioning yourself for the world's next car buyers, especially if your car is gas-powered.

Anyway, that was my little creative exercise for the day. I hope you enjoyed it.

And remember: Don't just illustrate the brief!

Note: The "Pedestrian" headline seems so obvious to me I'm not convinced it hasn't been done before, but I can't track down an example.

It’s often suggested that consumers aren’t “rational." They don’t necessarily buy the product with the best features at the lowest price. Instead, they’ll buy the product that looks the nicest, or the one their friend bought. Or the most expensive one.

And this is considered irrational.

But only if you don't think about how society itself works. Each of those things has a perfectly — dare I say — rational explanation.

Buying the nicest looking thing: Status is a fundamental part of society!

Buying the one their friend bought: Shared experiences are a fundamental part of society!

Buying the most expensive one: Veblen goods are a symbol of status, and see above about that!

In fact, good marketers who understand human behavior think all these things are pretty rational. Because people are people. People are part of a larger society. And society has a lot of rules that might be unspoken, but are just as real as any other rule. Even the ones we all consider “rational."

Sawbones is a podcast about medical history. The co-hosts, Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin, take listeners through the history of patent medicines, the days before surgery and germ theory, the age of “heroic medicine,” and all the other fun ways people have been wrong about science over the ages.

One of my favorite recurring bits is how they reference treatments that claim to cure almost anything: “Cure-alls cure nothing.”

That is, if something claims to do everything, it’s more likely it does nothing at all than actually help you.

Which is the first thing that pops into my head when a destination or resort tells me they “have it all.” Do you? Do you really? Have it all? Or do you have a bunch of things, none of which are very good?

We all know the first sign of a bad restaurant — a menu that’s much too long and spans more than one cuisine. We all know that this typically means the chef doesn’t do anything particularly well.

But we’re supposed to believe that a resort that “has it all” does everything well?

The even bigger problem is just how many resorts say this. In 20 minutes of Googling I was able to find what feels like an infinite list of resorts making this claim.

Here’s just a small sampling:

“We have it all, just waiting for you.”“From great fishing opportunities to fantastic amenities, we have it all.”“A self-indulging spa vacation, even a business retreat, we have it all, in one all-inclusive package.”“From sunken islands to rock reefs and points, we have it all.”“We have it all except for you!”“Whatever you want, we have it all.”“Whether you want to take a nice leisurely walk or climb some of the steepest mountains, we have it all.”

…and it goes on and on like that.

Am I saying that these are bad resorts? Of course not. They might all be spectacular in their own ways. But they way they’ve written about themselves sends the wrong message.

If you want people to believe you have everything, prove to them you have one thing.

Hemingway was famous for his ‘iceberg theory’:

“Hemingway said that only the tip of the iceberg showed in fiction—your reader will see only what is above the water—but the knowledge that you have about your character that never makes it into the story acts as the bulk of the iceberg. And that is what gives your story weight and gravitas.” - Wikipedia

Cure-alls cure nothing. Tell-alls tell nothing.

Instead, focus. Show that you know one or two things. Tell us what makes you different. Because, as we can see, having everything isn’t unique at all. In fact, almost everyone says they have that.

Take a stand. Say that you have the best outdoor pool, and mean it. Talk about your rooms having better views than anywhere else. Give an example of a time your staff went out of their way to help a guest.

Just don’t do all of them. Don’t do everything. Because then we won’t believe any of it.

If you knew the pilot flying your plane hadn’t studied physics, you might be a little worried. Even if he or she wasn’t an expert in the field, you’d hope they had a basic understanding of “lift.” At the very least, you’d want them to think the concept was important, right?

When you choose your advertising agency — the people you will trust to make money for your business — do you make sure they understand the basic concepts of marketing?

An agency that hasn't studied the last 100 years of advertising is as lazy as a pilot that doesn’t care about physics.

People have always bought things for extremely simple reasons: It makes them feel good. It fulfills a basic need or desire, and gives them emotional stimulation. Whether it’s insurance or a luxury vacation, people put their credit card down because it will take a weight off their shoulders.

60 or so years ago, the advertising world was at a crucial point, when research and study were mixing more and more with emotion, art, and creativity. Direct marketing and general advertising were stealing from each other, and each got better as a result.

Today, social media marketing and traditional advertising have the same potential — to learn from each other. Instead, both seem to be ignoring the other. Social media being the worst offender. You have agencies and people with no knowledge of history advising businesses on what customers want and need. Which gives you fluff campaigns that generate “awareness” but no sales.

And you have print campaigns going out into the world presented as if the internet doesn’t exist, and people won’t talk about them, for better or worse.

Advertising works. If your advertising has failed, look to whom you have put in charge. Are they students of history, or are they pretending that they’re inventing the future? When they talk about a social media campaign, can they put it in terms of past marketing successes, or is it presented as if this type of advertising is fundamentally new?

100 years is a long time for a business, but it’s no time at all for human psychology. What worked then will work now — you just need to pay attention.

Have you seen a Red Bull ad in Canada? After the "Red Bull gives you wings" tag, it finishes with, "Red Bull doesn't actually give you wings..."

I'm serious.

Can you imagine that? They spend 25 seconds selling you on a product that will pick you up and make your day better and then rip it all away in the final five.

Of course, they added that line because of lawsuits, I'm sure. But if you can't go all in with your campaign because of a rule you can't break, change the campaign.

As marketers, you can often be in a room with a client pitching an idea and hear, "I like the direction, but I'm not sure we should say it like that." Or, "what if we added another line?" Or "Can we also tell people about our other products?"

The answer should usually be, "No."

Why? Because you have a second, a fraction of a second, even, to make people feel something. Any cruft you add or allow to build reduces the power of your ad from something to nothing.

Creative marketing isn't incremental, like direct marketing. With direct marketing, you might put a dollar in and get two dollars back. And it can scale that way pretty far. A thousand dollars in, two thousand back. Maybe even three.

But with a creative advertisement, it's "one big idea in, one success back." Whatever that might cost. If you make it "one big idea in, then changed, then compromised," you get nothing back.

Essentially, advertising campaigns must be built around a single, profound idea that captures the imagination, is easy to understand, and drives desire to purchase.

It's hard to do.

These other marketers said that, instead of a single "big idea," you should focus on smaller executions, in greater volume. Media is fragmented, so one "big idea" won't cut it.

At the time, I felt relief.

Because I didn't think I was capable of coming up with an idea big enough to sell a product. I didn't want to admit that advertising was as hard as those old guys said it was.

Of course, now I know that the "big idea" is as alive as ever. Almost every advertising success, whether it's 50 years old or five months, can be traced back to a single, simple core idea that makes you feel something.

Persuading people to buy things is hard. Full stop. Anyone who tells you that it's easy hasn't done it.

Think about the easy things and the hard things:

It's easy to buy a bunch of Likes on Facebook, but will that turn into revenue?

It's easy to buy a fullpage ad in a newspaper that tells people all the reasons you think they should buy your product. But will that make them excited?

It's easy to pay a celebrity to stand somewhere holding your product. But will it drive longterm sales?

Any method or media that promises to make things easier will probably save you time, and but it will cost you money in lost sales.

Sure, sometimes, every once in a while, there might be an easier way. It's true.

But most of the time, if you hear something and think, "Phew, that'll be easier," it's probably best to run away.